News

Archive for the: Project update category

A study into a new and more effective treatment for acute stroke
in England, carried out by researchers from PenCLAHRC with
colleagues from Newcastle University, Northumbria University and
the Oxford Academic Health Science Network, has been awarded
funding of £22,000 from the Stroke Association.

Stroke is a serious, life-threatening and often debilitating
condition, which can have a devastating impact on patients and
their families. In the UK, nearly 90,000 people a year are admitted
to hospital following a stroke, with many of those who survive left
severely disabled.

A PenCLAHRC trial team are looking for volunteers to help study
the benefits of singing groups for people with a communication
disorder associated with strokes.

Aphasia is a speech and language disorder caused by damage to
the brain and it is thought that around one in three people who
have had a stroke experience it to some degree.

People with aphasia can struggle to speak and often make
mistakes with the words they use, sometimes using the wrong sounds
or putting words together incorrectly. They can also experience
difficulty reading and writing.

Researchers are now seeking volunteers in Devon and Cornwall to
take...

As a partnership of NHS Trusts across Devon, Cornwall and
Somerset, plus the Universities of Exeter and Plymouth, we aim to
work with healthcare professionals, policymakers and the public to
identify areas of research that reflect the real needs and concerns
of the health service in the South West.

Highlighting how this works in practice, we’ve brought together
some of the work carried out with the South Western Ambulance
Service NHS Foundation Trust (SWASFT).

Sarah Black, Research Manager at SWASFT, shares her view of the
partnership between the ambulance service and PenCLAHRC:

“We’ve always found working with PenCLAHRC a really rewarding
experience. They get research...

Excluding children from school may lead to long-term psychiatric
problems and psychological distress, a study of thousands of
children has shown. Research by the University of Exeter, published
in the journal Psychological Medicine this month, found that a new
onset mental disorder may be a consequence of exclusion from
school.

The analysis by a team led by Professor Tamsin Ford of
responses from over 5,000 school-aged children, their parents and
their teachers, found that children with learning difficulties
and mental health problems such as depression, anxiety, ADHD and
autism spectrum conditions were more likely to be excluded from the
classroom.

Social prescribing has the potential to address many of the
factors that perpetuate illness, decrease quality of life and add
to health care costs – such as social isolation, inactivity and
smoking. It has expanded the options available to GPs who have
patients requiring financial, housing and other social advice
alongside their medical care.

In a piece published in BMJ Opinion, PenCLAHRC Research Fellow
Dr Kerryn Husk warns that, in order for social prescribing to reach
its full potential and make a true difference to patients, more
needs to be done to understand what works, for whom, and in what
circumstances.

A large-scale trial led by the University of Exeter, presented
at the international Alzheimer’s Association International
Conference (AAIC) 2017 on Tuesday July 18, has found that cognitive
rehabilitation leads to people seeing satisfying progress in areas
that enable them to maintain their functioning and
independence.

The Goal-oriented Cognitive Rehabilitation in Early-stage
Alzheimer’s and Related Dementias: Multi-centre Single-blind
Randomised Controlled Trial (GREAT) trial involved 475 people
across eight sites in England and Wales. Half of them received ten
cognitive rehabilitation sessions over three months, and the other
half did not. The group receiving the therapy then took part in
four ‘top-up’ sessions...

It is widely acknowledged that care provided by the NHS and
other services should be person-centred - that is, centred on the
individual and responsive to their needs. One way of achieving this
is through a better understanding of the patient’s experience of
care and a PenCLAHRC project has been the first to put together a
guide for commissioners on this topic.

The new guide was compiled by PenCLAHRC researchers and
patient-centred coordinated care experts based at Plymouth
University Peninsula Schools of Medicine and Dentistry, with
support from NHS England, the Coalition for Collaborative Care, and
the South West Academic Health...

“With the HSMA programme, we have developed an exciting new way
for the NHS to engage with the power and potential of simulation
modelling in a meaningful way. It means that NHS
organisations across the region can build their in-house capacity
to build models that inform decisions whilst seeing real impact for
the organisation.

Dan Chalk, Research Fellow in the PenCHORD team and lead
for the HSMA programme

To mark the end of the first year of our Health Service
Modelling Associates (HSMA) programme, we’ve launched a new website
to showcase the impacts that this innovative scheme has had on NHS
Trusts across the...

A national collaboration supported by PenCLAHRC,
investigating ways to support prisoners with mental health problems
both before and after release, has received additional funding of
almost £290,000 to continue its work for another 10 months.

Engager is a collaboration between Plymouth University
Peninsula Schools of Medicine and Dentistry (PUPSMD), the
University of Manchester, University College London and the
University of Exeter. It has already received funding in the region
of £2.2 million from the NIHR Programme Grants for Applied Research
(PGfAR), which has also supported this latest funding.

The project aims to develop and evaluate a way of organising
care and support for prisoners...

A GW4-funded collaboration between researchers from PenCLAHRC
and GW4 universities has revealed gaps in provision for dealing
with self-harm in secondary schools.

Staff from 153 schools in Wales and South-West England took part
in a survey consultation to gather information on schools’
experience of students who self-harm, including self-harm
provisions and barriers to addressing self-harm. This was
followed by focus groups in eight schools to explore these issues
in more depth.

The survey revealed that schools do not have a common or unified
approach towards dealing with self-harm, but instead employ a
variety of ad-hoc strategies including applying first aid and
informing their safeguarding...